I don't think this is actually true. It's a nice rhetorical soundbite, but if you count properly (e.g. all taxes all assets owned by Buffett actually pay) there's no way he pays less unless his secretary is extremely exceptional for some reason. It is true that her tax structure is probably different from Buffett's, so if you creatively form your query so that taxes that Buffett predominantly pays are excluded and taxes that the secretary predominantly pays are included, you could probably find a way to justify it, but that would not be a valuable insight.
And of course the whole "pays less", as formulated, is a bit deceptive - his rate of one of the taxes is lower as a percentage, but he actually pays vastly more in actual money (Berkshire Hathaway alone, in which he holds a substantial share, pays billions in taxes every year).
If you only count one specific tax among dozens, maybe. But again, that's just a pointless soundbite, which completely dissolves under a proper inquiry.
I don't think this is actually true. It's a nice rhetorical soundbite, but if you count properly (e.g. all taxes all assets owned by Buffett actually pay) there's no way he pays less unless his secretary is extremely exceptional for some reason. It is true that her tax structure is probably different from Buffett's, so if you creatively form your query so that taxes that Buffett predominantly pays are excluded and taxes that the secretary predominantly pays are included, you could probably find a way to justify it, but that would not be a valuable insight.
And of course the whole "pays less", as formulated, is a bit deceptive - his rate of one of the taxes is lower as a percentage, but he actually pays vastly more in actual money (Berkshire Hathaway alone, in which he holds a substantial share, pays billions in taxes every year).